In the Spirit of Medicine: We’re leaving for Eleuthera Island soon

Ivy Vainio (second from right) and her family in Rock Sound, Eleuthera Island

Credit Ivy Vainio

I always think when you’re finding your family history, you want there to be a haunted Scottish castle on a moor and maybe some kind of lost treasure. Instead, we found poverty in the heart of Tampa and we found love and acceptance.

Related Content

I have something for you and for him. It’s the only Ojibwe song I know and it was given to me to sing in the American Cemetery in Luxembourg. I sang it there for my wife’s great uncle Johnny Mercer and everyone who died on that B-17 bomber and for every warrior there. It’s a Soldier Song and I want to sing it for you now.

“I remember your stories and I appreciate what you tried to teach me. I wish I could have gone ricing with you and heard you knocking rice as the flocks of redwing blackbirds rose and fell by the thousands in the rice beds. I’ve thought about you sitting by the fire on cold February nights with the stars bright above you and the trees popping and snapping from the cold as you cooked your maple syrup. I want to learn some of our songs and I always hoped you would teach them to me.”